Opinion: Johnny Anglais

POSTED: 09/2/11 11:47 AM

When we read this story we had to think about something Ombudsman Arduin told us this week: something legal can be very improper. Now we don’t think that our civil servant are engaging in this kind of activities (though we’re not giving any guarantees, okay?) but the story is about a teacher in a country at a safe distance from our shores, in the United Kingdom.
The teacher is a 31-year old with a kinky streak in his character. He led a secret life as a strip dancer and a porn actor. His real name is Benedict Garrett, his actor’s name Johnny Anglais.
The teacher came under investigation when students spotted him in a trailer for a porn video. This shows that students have a taste for porn, but that’s not the point here.
Garrett was dragged in front of the General Teaching Council which we imagine to be a stuffy board of retired teachers who think that everything was better fifty years ago.
But lookie here: the Council concluded, after hearing Johnny Anglais, that the man may stay on as a teacher on the condition that he stops with his extracurricular activities. So Johnny – no, Benedict – is no longer allowed to rent himself out as a nude butler, which is without any doubt a serious loss for the British naked butler industry.
Garrett argued that his activities ought to be allowed as long as they were not illegal. At the same time he pleased the stuffy Council with the statement that his behavior is inappropriate because teachers are also role models for their students.
Experts in the UK are amazed about the Council’s ruling, we read in a newspaper report. That remark in turn amazed us: are those experts not supposed to be members of the general Teaching Council? Not as stuffy as we first thought, that Council.